Mt Everest

[Peter Pallotta]

I remember when I was quite young reading about Sir Edmund Hillary being the first to climb Mt Everest. Like the breaking of the 4 minute mile or the first moon walk, it was an event the resonated beyond/deeper than the athletic or technical achievement alone; it was about a person experiencing what no one had ever experienced before - the opening up of new vistas and possibilities.
A while ago I read that today, at any given time during the short climbing season, there may be as many as 300 people waiting at the base camp for their turn to climb Everest. Sometimes at spots that now have built in ladders, there are actually long line ups.
One result of this has been that some are pushing themselves beyond the now almost 'common' feat of climbing Everest. They are attempting it without oxygen and/or without support teams, and/or going up and along particularly challenging routes.
At the highest levels (no pun intended) is something analogous happening at the top end private clubs and with the most prestigious of new designs?
Are developers and members and architects pushing to get and to create new vistas, new and bolder and rarer benchmarks and experiences because what used to be extraordinary has now become commonplace?
If so, is there an end in sight, and a kind of built-in limit to these ambitions?
Or can you get even bigger than Mammoth Dunes, longer than Erin Hills, starker and more isolated than Sand Hills, faster than Oakmont, more exclusive than that place in the Carolinas, more expensive than x y and z?

[Tom_Doak]

Personally, I would prefer to spend my latter years exploring whether you can get more quirky than Prestwick, more compact than Merion, and more inscrutable than St. Andrews.


But I suspect you are more likely to see a course named "Everest" soon.  I hope you've trafemarked it for golf!

[Ed Brzezowski]

After watching that display I think I will watch more Ladies golf events. Somehow I simply cannot relate to a 198 yard eight iron shot. Or a 327 yard lay up with a three wood.

Their game is really bomb and gouge and personally I just don't find it interesting anymore. It's like watching the Long Drive contest a few weeks ago.

I hope they go back to Merion where I can watch them bomb them into some ones yard.

[MCirba]

Ed,


Agree 100%.


When is the last time that happened?

[Joe_Tucholski]

If you're asking if humans are trying to improve or do "better" than others...the answer is yes.


If you're asking if our attempts to improve are harmful or beneficial...I don't know but will go with yes.

[Peter Pallotta]

I think it's a question worth asking at least.
I think the analogy is not too far off - risky/unhealthy behaviour (both on the mountaintop and on the land) driven in part by the desire to go where no one has gone before. 
That desire can come from a wonderful place in the human spirit, and is sometimes of great benefit to the whole of humankind.
When it comes to new golf course development, however, my view is that it might be time to shine on spotlight on that desire.
Others may like what they see, and of course they are free to do so. 
I'm not saying I'm "right" - I'm just saying that I don't like what I see. And I'm not sure that, in this case, the desire to go where no one has gone before comes from the best of places. Sure, there are market-driven and economic reasons for it, for doing anything at all, but those considerations should, IMO, always be only part of the equation.   
The expectations around what a resort destination needs to be/needs to provide seem to me to have gotten out of whack.
There are exceptions: the two courses at Forest Dunes, and the scope/size of the resort and the accommodations there, seem just about right to me.
But the trend doesn't seem to be going in that direction.
I think the trend is worth looking at and debating - and by much more knowledgeable and influential and experienced people than me.
Okay, I've said enough the last few days; too much in fact!
Peter

[Craig Sweet]

It is all driven by money...Everest, exclusive clubs, power golf, the desire to have/do what very few others can afford.

[Ronald Montesano]

As golfers manifest themselves as athletes, should we sound as whiny as those soon-to-be-departed whiners on The Bachelor?


If I had the physical potential of Brooks Koepka, you bet I would maximize my size, to the betterment of my skill. Hogan would have, Babe would have, Betsy, Patty, and Gary would have (oh, wait, Gary did.)


If I could bestow one gift on every GCA member, it would be a trace of where the ball and clubface meet for professional golfers, women and men. This notion of hit it in the center is either unimportant or so mysterious that none of us figures out how to do it, but they, the professionals, do.


The great question of the next 365 days is this: What is it about your type of course that identifies a different champion from not your type of course?

[Peter Pallotta]

Ron - I may have mentioned EH in passing, but as I hoped my follow up post demonstrated I'm focusing on the game and the places that *we* play, and on the destinations being created to meet *our* needs. I have no desire to diminish or devalue the skills of the greatest players on the world or to disparage the courses that they play on.
Apologies for any confusion.
Peter

[Ed Brzezowski]

Ed,


Agree 100%.


When is the last time that happened?

I'm going to play the lottery today, this is a strange happening.

[MCirba]

Ed,


I hope you win. 


btw...my 8 iron is good for 140 max if I hood/flush it these days.  You should watch me play sometime.   

[John Kavanaugh]

Don't underestimate the value of introducing discipline into your life. Most serious golfers rarely are told no in their daily lives. We need to climb an Everest now and then just to be reminded that life isn't just a walk in the park.

[Ed Brzezowski]

Ed,


I hope you win. 


btw...my 8 iron is good for 140 max if I hood/flush it these days.  You should watch me play sometime.   


I believe we would be on opposite sides of the fairway.  Grab The Prof and come down to Concord, before another stupid member tosses a diaper down the sewer line and we all die of some deadly cooties.

[Peter Pallotta]

Don't underestimate the value of introducing discipline into your life. Most serious golfers rarely are told no in their daily lives. We need to climb an Everest now and then just to be reminded that life isn't just a walk in the park.

Interesting, on many fronts.
Discipline is a great virtue. I'm sorely lacking in it.
But one kind of discipline - one kind of practice, one kind of meditation, as it were - might be that of accepting, without rancour, the *limitations* that life/circumstances/character places on our personal autonomy and ambitions.
Just because we want to do something, just because we *can* do something, doesn't mean we *should* do it.
 

[paul cowley]

I crossed Mt Everest off my bucket list in 1984...there were no lines then btw...nor electricity...or cell phones, or help if you got hurt. A lot of vastness, views and vistas.


As for golf I find myself more with Tom D nowadays. I would much prefer building affordable and fun courses for the masses the rest of my days (if anyone wants to build stuff the old way I'm available).


I've chased that ball of gold in the sky that Peter describes...and actually climbed to one...and although it wasn't clay (as Stephen Crane's poem suggests), it was more like gold plate. I've now come to the conclusion that with all the hoopla involved with the more 'special' courses, (exclusivity, pretension etc), I think I prefer playing 'common man' courses with non special facilities (just good food and drink in a relaxed casual environment)...especially if I had to make a choice between the two types on a daily basis.


Orchard Creek in Altamont NY comes to mind.


Homesick now...

[Charlie_Bell]

The Mt. Everest of golf courses has been built, and it is in Aberdeenshire, Scotland.  Surely you've heard.

[Joe Hancock]

Paul C,


I'm homesick too. Can I join your 4 some?

[paul cowley]

Joe....wouldn't that be nice mi amigo...either your place or mine!

[Kirk Gill]

I would never in my life have been able to climb Everest, even with all of the aids that are there for the climber now - the ladders that cross ice chasms or allow for easier climbing of very technical bits, or the ropes that help climbers make it up well-trodden routes. But even with that said, even with people still dying in the attempt to climb that mountain, there's a part of me that feels like the achievement of climbing it has been lessened by all of the changes, all of the "help."
 
If I try to make an analogy between that and golf, I think of how hard to hit my grandpa's old clubs are. How courses like Pine Valley were designed and built for players who played a tougher game. And even with a better ball and better clubs and with carts and distance-measuring aids, I'm one of those guys who can still die out there on the course, my score hopelessly distant from par. George Crump pushed "to create new vistas, new and bolder and rarer benchmarks" when he first built that course, and perhaps it's true that climbing Mt. Everest and building a course like Pine Valley are both achievements of the human spirit and acts of hubris.

[JC Urbina]

Peter,


I continue to subscribe to this ambition, as Tom Ferrel quoted me in his interview,


"You weren't  imposing your vision on the land--- you were drawing your vision from it"
Its an analog approach in a digital world.


Trying not to impose ideas on the land allows for unlimited freedom in the design, you never reach the top, because the land is always changing.


Its not bigger, longer, more expensive or difficult so as long as you keep it analog " continuously variable"

[Peter Pallotta]

Thanks gents.
That's a fine post and a terrific insight about analog, JC.
I fear, however, that most of the so-called 'smart money' is on digital, ie that developers who are able to finance a new course are in that position precisely because they revel in digital, and fear/mock the analog.